Getting settled in

After 24 hours (+9 hours time difference) of flights and trains, Sandor and I arrived to 's-Hertogenbosch (Den Bosch) Sunday evening. Apart from the momentary scare of the suitcases, loaded with with my tools and clothes for the next 3-months, are not showing up on the conveyor belt at the baggage claim, the trip was uneventful, and numbing. At least, I got to catch up on the movie hits of the past year on the plane.
Den Bosch is charming. Clean, old, and slow paced. But on Sunday afternoon everybody was out, milling around the Markt (Market square). From one vantage point I could count 6 pubs with outdoor seating (all full) and 3 stalls selling fried food. Near the Sint-Janskathedraal, the town was hosting a big public sing-along event. (Think karaoke with hundreds of people.) Getting our orange straw hats (the national color of the Netherlands) and the printed lyrics of the songs played we were drinking beer, eating waffles, and singing our hearts out until late at night.

We arrived to the Centre Monday morning, me ready to begin and Sandor ready take more trains and flights, this time to Hungary.
In the morning, I was given keys to my apartment and the studio and showed around. The apartment is tiny but it has everything it needs. The studio is amazing! I went speechless seeing the work space I was given: It's almost as big as our entire house in Seattle, at least a 1000sqfeet! 20-foot ceilings, clean white walls, smooth, clean cement floor, a sink with a system to trap particles, floor drains, and a whole wall of huge windows looking out to the courtyard. Everything is clean, spacious and frighteningly empty (for the time being). Later that day, sitting in my space racking my brain on what the next step should be, the studio looked intimidating in its vastness and emptiness.
Unpacking my tools and supply did not take any time, as the result also did not take up much space. The first challenge: I need paper! I did not bring any drawing paper for sketching and planning out ideas, in fact I even left my large sketchbook at home.
After ransacking the copier I started making some ink drawings, trying to decide about the shapes for the clay forms (units) and cutting the drawings out. The plan I arrived with was to cast multiple parts for and eventually make a suspended landscape-like installation one can walk into. I've been conflicted over this plan, I like the idea, but the scale and hassle with shipping it home keeps me from embracing it fully. By the end of the first day, I covered some walls, and some floor and was introduced to the plaster and mold making area in detail. Every shop or technology here has its own expert staff. If a resident needs a meeting with a tech, we put our names on the board and they show up before the end of the workday, to brainstorm, troubleshoot or consult on the possibilities of getting from an idea to the finished product.
By tonight, I made a mold, some bone china clay (both a plastic body for building and a casting slip), explored options of using CAD to design the units I need for the installation. I also fell in love with the possibilities of porcelain-foam and got a crazy idea of using that with pink clay to make sexy little forms (I hope I will eventually ditch this idea too).

I promise to write about the shops in detail in the next post.